Tirade from tweeting Duke of York marks a break with royal protocol

There is a simple rule that has served the Royal family well for generations: never respond to speculation in the media.

The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have all had their fair share of hurtful gossip aimed at them over the decades, but always resisted the temptation to push back. To do so, after all, would only inflame the situation.

In recent weeks, Buckingham Palace has fielded calls from media organisations all over the world desperately seeking confirmation of stories about the York family. Are Prince Andrew and Prince Charles really at each other’s throats over the status of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie? Is it true that Andrew has demanded his future sons-in-law are given earldoms? Is Princess Eugenie engaged? Did Beatrice really slash Ed Sheeran’s face with a sword?

Princess Beatrice, Sarah Duchess of York and Princess Eugenie meeting young cancer patients and their families at the University College Hospital, London.Credit:
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The Palace, of course, retained its usual stony silence on all of the above, and as a result the stories were short-lived, limited in reach, and would soon have been forgotten.

But the Duke of York, it would seem, has other ideas. He decided last night to bypass the phalanx of media advisers and PR experts employed by the Royal Household, and sat down to type a statement himself.

The stories, he said, “have no basis of fact”, and were “completely made up and an invention”.

The suggestion that he wanted future sons-in-law to have titles was “a complete fabrication” and there is “no truth” in the suggestion that he and the Prince of Wales disagreed over his daughters’ participation in royal duties.

Moreover, he wanted nothing more for his daughter than for them to be “modern working young women, who happen to be members of the Royal family”.

Sarah Duchess of York, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie meeting young cancer patients and their families at the University College Hospital, London. Credit:
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That he had gone it alone was evident not only from his signature at the bottom but also the grammatical errors and unnecessary capitals contained in the statement, as well as the fact that he published it himself on Twitter (he uses the initials AY next to his tweets to show he is tweeting personally).

He is not the only member of the Royal family to have access to Twitter, but he is the only one who has ever issued his own official statement on it without, it seems, any approval from elsewhere (it may be significant that Sally Osman, the experienced Director of Royal Communications, has been off work this week).

So what will the Queen be thinking? Dickie Arbiter LVO was Her Majesty’s press secretary until 2000, and said the Duke of York’s decision to issue the statement “beggars belief”.

He said: “It’s a very silly thing to do. There is a tried and trusted way of dealing with these stories - you just ignore it. If there’s speculation, forget it, and it blows itself out.

“But instead he has given the story legs. As Mrs Thatcher would say, he has given it the oxygen of publicity. You have to wonder whether he has been persuaded to do it by the Duchess of York.”

Prince Andrew and the Queen.Credit:
EPA/TAL COHEN/EPA/TAL COHEN

It was certainly no coincidence that the Duke’s statement appeared just hours after his ex-wife had told reporters to “stop bullying the York family” and held up their daughters as an example of “good parenting”.

This was a co-ordinated effort from a former couple who have remained so close that they still live in the same house and evidently share the same ideas.

“I cannot continue to stand by and have the media speculate on [the Princesses’] futures based on my purported interventions,” raged the Duke in his statement. Was the Duchess, perhaps, standing over his shoulder as he typed that?

The last time the Duke made such a personal - and public - statement was when he was backed into a corner because of his unwise friendship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On that occasion he had little choice, given that he was being accused in court papers in the US of improper sexual conduct with a teenager.

This time, though, he was faced with nothing more than gossip, which makes the Duke’s decision to press “Tweet” on his statement all the more extraordinary.

Perhaps he felt emboldened by his nephew Prince Harry’s decision to put out his own statement last month about his girlfriend Meghan Markle - another major departure from normal royal protocol.

Actress Meghan Markle with Prince HarryCredit:
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The wisdom of Prince Harry’s actions are still open to debate (his statement had the unintended consequence of acting as official confirmation that he was in a serious relationship with Miss Markle) but Prince Harry was, at least, trying to protect his girlfriend from what he saw as harassment and threats to her safety.

The Duke of York, on the other hand, is trying to protect his daughters from nothing more than what his ex-wife characterised as “tittle-tattle”.

In talking of the Princesses as “modern working young women” he risks riling a whole generation of women struggling to make ends meet in austerity Britain. How many of them have managed to pack in 18 foreign breaks in the space of a year, as Beatrice recently did?

“The whole thing is a bit naff,” said Mr Arbiter. “They are so far down the food chain that quite frankly does it matter what people say?”